Everyone wants to hit the water now that summer is here. Pontoons, kayaks, sailboats, motorboats, and the like can be found everywhere. As with everything, safety measures need to be in place before your boat hits the water.
- Pay attention to the weather before you head out. No one likes to get caught in a storm. And certainly no one wants to be on the water in a thunderstorm.
- Do you have the proper equipment for your guests and your boat? For boats with engines make sure you have enough gas for a roundtrip.
- Don’t overload your boat. I know it’s going to be hard to keep your guests at a minimum, but if you don’t everyone can be swimming.
- Have lifejackets for everyone. Sure they are big and bulky, but they’ll save lives.
- Don’t drink and boat. Be the designated boater of the party. Everyone will thank you for it.
- Pay attention. I’m sure you wouldn’t want anyone to run into you and the best way to avoid that is by paying attention, cause someone else might not be.
If you are heading out on the water this summer, you need to make sure you are fully insured. Most homeowners insurance policies won’t cover boating incidents.
Contact our office today for a review of your policies.
Content provided by Transformer Marketing.
Sources: http://www.discoverboating.com/beginner/safety/tips.aspx and http://www.coit.com/blog/boating-safety-tips
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When your insurance company issued your Workers Compensation policy, you paid an estimated premium for the term of the policy. This rate was based on the nature of your business and your estimated payroll. However, once your policy expires, the insurance company conducts a premium audit to gather data about your actual costs for the applicable policy term. If there is any shortfall, you are responsible for the difference between the original estimate and actual premium.
Naturally, you want to keep the difference between the estimated and actual rate as low as possible. Consider the following list of tips:
- Have all necessary records available for the auditor.
- Break down your payroll by classification code so that the auditor doesn’t have to classify any unexplained payroll. Leaving the decision up to the auditor could result in having the payroll placed in the highest classification.
- Separate overtime wages from regular wages. This allows the auditor to discount the overtime wages back to regular wages.
- Exclude tips, severance pay, meal and travel advances and bonuses paid for inventions, because none of these are included in Workers Compensation premium calculations.
- Divide uninsured subcontractor billings into material and labor costs since you are only required to pay premiums for labor. If you don’t have an actual split, figure on 50% for each. One important exception to this is for heavy equipment operators who are employed as subcontractors. In this case, use a third of their total billings as reportable labor costs.
- Don’t include short- or long-term disability payments in the data given to the auditor because these are excluded from premium calculations.
- Be sure to cap all covered officers’ payroll at the maximum for your state.
- Exclude wages paid to employees who are on active military duty because their wages aren’t included in premium calculations.
- Present the auditor with all Certificates of Insurance for covered subcontractors so you aren’t charged for them.
- Classify all employees in the lower-rated payroll classifications if you aren’t sure about where they should be classified. However, you should never deliberately misclassify an employee.
- Be sure you make the auditor aware of all employees who do only clerical work and are physically located away from the shop floor. These employees qualify to be classified in the lower rated clerical codes. If your clerical staff isn’t physically separate from the shop, you should consider changing their work location.
Contact our office for more information.
Content provided by Transformer Marketing.
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Damage can come in all forms including vandalism. If you don’t act immediately, you can be faced with additional expenses to fix that damage. We have compiled a list of tips you can enact when facing such damage.
- Call a professional. These guys know how to remove the graffiti and vandalism that the vandals have caused.
- Typical household cleaning products will not take care of the damage on upholstered furniture, fabrics, and carpets. The professional will be able to take care of that.
- Go through all of your damage and make a detailed list of everything.
- Leave the chemicals and paints to the professionals.
- If you have shards of glass over your furniture and on the floor, use a shop vacuum to clean that up.
- Don’t touch your electrical equipment.
- If your house has been egged, use water in cleaning it off.
- Any debris on the furniture or interior walls needs to be removed. Do not rub the debris off, only scrape or blot the debris off.
If you have found yourself the victim of vandalism, call the police immediately and then the professionals, so your damage won’t stay permanent.
Content provided by Transformer Marketing.
Sources: Servicemaster
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Damage can come in all forms including fire and smoke damage, and water damage. If you don’t act immediately, you can be faced with additional expenses to fix that damage. We have compiled a list of tips you can enact when facing such damage. Today we are going to focus fire and smoke damage.
- Call a professional. Some by-products can cause etching which is irreversible fairly quickly.
- Do not touch anything that has been damaged with your bare hands. Your hands carry oil which can cause additional damage.
- Open up the house and air out any smoke damage, if the outside temperature is warm.
- Do not wash any of the walls that have smoke/fire damage. The wrong cleaning component can cause more damage.
- Clean off your Formica, chrome, porcelain or aluminum fixtures to prevent permanent tarnishing.
- Call a professional to clean up any upholstered furniture and carpets. Don’t clean them yourself.
- Keep away from anything and everything electronic until they have been checked out by and cleared by a professional.
- Replace your air filter on your furnace if you use forced air.
- If your ceiling is wet, do not use any of the fixtures.
- Throw away all food packages that have been opened.
- Any clothing that has been tarnished, send to a professional for cleaning.
- Clean out the refrigerator and keep the doors open, if the electricity is off.
For more information, please feel to contact our office.
Content provided by Transformer Marketing.
Sources: Servicemaster
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Most employers know that they can be held legally liable for sexual harassment occurring in their workplace. However, many may not know that there’s a way to considerably reduce their exposure to liability. The courts have actually laid out a road map of sorts when it comes to reducing employer risk for sexual harassment liability. In 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court made it quite clear that laws related to sexual harassment weren’t made in an effort to enable employer vs. employee lawsuits, but rather as a motivation for employers to take reasonable and responsible action in preventing sexual harassment. Employers that have demonstrated this reasonable and responsible action are less likely to be held legally liable for damages. Here are the practices and policies every employer should abide to fulfill their obligation in preventing workplace sexual harassment, thereby reducing their liability risk:
- A comprehensively written policy against sexual harassment should be in place to demonstrate the concern, stance, and dedication to the prevention of sexual harassment on the part of the employer. This policy should clearly define sexual harassment and give examples of what constitutes sexual harassment. After the policy is read, the employee should know that either gender may be victim; either gender may perpetrator; and that sexual harassment is dictated by victim perception, not whether or not the perpetrator intended the behavior as harassing.
- Legal terminology and otherwise obtuse language should be avoided when composing a sexual harassment policy. It should be written in a manner that an average employee would comprehend. In most cases, if the wording is such that a high school senior would have difficulty comprehending it, then it’s too complex. Employers should also be mindful of non-English speaking employees and publish translations accordingly.
- Make sure that the sexual harassment policy identifies which employees or department should be contacted to initiate the complaint process; outlines the complaint and investigation process from start to finish, including any appeal process; and identifies what the penalties are for sexual harassment. Retaliation should also be addressed. It should be clear that retaliation against a complainant will not be tolerated and that retaliation is a form of harassment too.
- More often than not, an employer isn’t held liable because of the actual harassment, but rather because they failed to have or apprise their employees of the complaint procedure or failed to respond when the complaint procedure was utilized. So, never write a complaint off or disregard it. Each and every complaint should be viewed as a serious matter and investigated with a process that’s consistent and that’s reasonable for all involved.
- Although many employers feel that their policy is adequate, the best policy in the world is useless if an employee can claim that they’ve never laid eyes on it. Therefore, orientation of new employees should include a signature that the new employee has received, read, and understood the sexual harassment policy.
- Of course, there must be ongoing exposure to the policy for employees to realize that their employer is actually serious about sexual harassment and the enforcement of consequences. Sources of exposure may include periodic sexual harassment summaries through brochures or educational pamphlets, newsletter articles, in-service training, and employee meetings.
- It’s also crucial that any employee in a supervisory position be trained not only to enforce the sexual harassment policy, but as someone that could be a harasser themselves. Often, especially in medium to larger businesses, the employer will not be the one to first receive a complaint. Yet, employers are strictly liable if supervisors engage in subordinate harassment or fail to enforce the harassment policy. Keep in mind that many people engage in behaviors that are overlooked by individuals they come across in their personal life and thereby feel that the same behaviors will be overlooked at work too.
The most often used excuse when an employee is accused of sexual harassment is that they weren’t the only employee that has acted in such a way. Sadly, although the above statement in no way excuses the behavior, it’s often true. And, it’s this type of environment that tolerates or overlooks sexual harassment that substantially increases the liability risk of the employer. Simply having a policy will not hold weight in court. It must be comprehensive and there must be employee exposure and employer enforcement. These steps require a time and resource commitment for the policy to be applied in a manner that will reduce sexual harassment liability risks for employers and reduce the frequency of sexual harassment incidences for employees.
Contact our office for more information.
Content provided by Transformer Marketing.
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Beaches are an inexpensive way to get away (well if you stay local) and have some R&R. You can bring your entire family (yes, even a family reunion), break out the barbecue and let the kids go wild in the water.
Here are a few tips to make your trip to the beach more enjoyable.
- Protect the skin. Grab the sunscreen, that cute little umbrella, and relax knowing that you and your family are protected by the sun’s harsh rays.
- Pack the camera. Film and click away your fun filled beach day.
- Tidal pools anyone? These are fun ways to get up close and personal with some really cool creatures from the sea.
- The world is your sandbox. Well, at least for the day. Bring your shovel and pail and have some sandcastle fun with the kids.
- Go fly a kite. Literally.
- Bring the volleyball or badminton set and play a couple of games.
- Collect the seashells. These are great souvenirs and don’t cost anything. When you clean them you can add them to your fish tank or even make shell jewelry.
This summer have a blast at the beach!
Content provided by Transformer Marketing.
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Everyone wants to hit the water now that summer is here. Pontoons, kayaks, sailboats, motorboats, and the like can be found everywhere. As with everything, safety measures need to be in place before your boat hits the water.
